On Becoming an Adept
Dec. 26th, 2009 05:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qosI remembered the other thought I was going to post about this morning, something else which came up during my time with LM during our meditation together on Christmas Day.
One becomes an adept not by having natural talent, but by doing the work, day in and day out, week by week, month by month, year by year. Natural talent can be bonus -- but it can also be a drawback. If the first stages come too easily, one can begin to feel entitled to that ease of achievement and begrudge the hard, detailed, boring work that must also be part of the mastery of any path.
There is also the wisdom which is captured by a friend's userpic: The obstacles are the path.
None of this is new. Others have wrestled with this challenge and had to come to this realization for millennia. Being a magical adept has much in common with being a master musician, warrior, athlete or writer. To become more than a talented amateur you have to spend uncounted hours in repetitive drills, spending more time on "the basics" than most beginners ever will. One must balance the humility of being willing to perform the basics over and over with the confident assurance that yes it will make a difference.
I've fought this for so long.
But I'm becoming reconciled to it.
In fact, on reflection, I may even have stopped hating it.
I'm starting to see the flecks of shine where I've been polishing.
There's still a lot of work to do, but I'm starting to see where and how and why the work pays off.
I posted yesterday that that Christmas felt like New Year's day to me. My cards for the coming year are the Knight of Wands and the 8 of Pentacles.
The Knight of Wands comes from a Tarot.com reading which included these wonderful words: The Knight of Wands in this position advises that you modify your self-image in order to get a sense of yourself as a person of action. No matter what your past patterns have been, it is fully possible to place yourself solidly on your road toward the future. As someone who has spent far too much of life waiting for the tides of whatever to sweep me into whatever place I was supposed to go, this is a radically reassuring and affirming message.
The 8 of Pentacles. . . well, that's the card of Doing the Work: spending the time to make sure the basic skills are so thoroughly a part of one's practice that the foundation is sturdy and reliable.
The cards are from my favorite Robin Wood deck. Knight of Wands is center top.
The King of Wands keeps coming up in the same position for me, that of the "higher power" which can indicate one's own higher consciousness or a guardian figure. The King of Wands was one of LM's signature cards. It's also significant in light of my work integrating the masculine energy of cards which have been important to the influential men in my life, particularly the Kings of Wands and Swords and the Emperor.
The 9 of Pentacles resonates with me more deeply than the Queen of Pentacles, and speaks to my ongoing work around good physical self-care, being a good steward of my resources, and uniting my spiritual path with my daily life.
And of course I continue my ongoing journey to appreciate and honor my internal Queen of Cups, whose existence I strenuously denied for most of my life.
The Queen of Swords remains my primary tarot identification, and I'm working on remembering and revitalizing my Queen of Wands aspect as well. She's been shrouded during the years of grieving and it's time I drew on her fire again.
One becomes an adept not by having natural talent, but by doing the work, day in and day out, week by week, month by month, year by year. Natural talent can be bonus -- but it can also be a drawback. If the first stages come too easily, one can begin to feel entitled to that ease of achievement and begrudge the hard, detailed, boring work that must also be part of the mastery of any path.
There is also the wisdom which is captured by a friend's userpic: The obstacles are the path.
None of this is new. Others have wrestled with this challenge and had to come to this realization for millennia. Being a magical adept has much in common with being a master musician, warrior, athlete or writer. To become more than a talented amateur you have to spend uncounted hours in repetitive drills, spending more time on "the basics" than most beginners ever will. One must balance the humility of being willing to perform the basics over and over with the confident assurance that yes it will make a difference.
I've fought this for so long.
But I'm becoming reconciled to it.
In fact, on reflection, I may even have stopped hating it.
I'm starting to see the flecks of shine where I've been polishing.
There's still a lot of work to do, but I'm starting to see where and how and why the work pays off.
I posted yesterday that that Christmas felt like New Year's day to me. My cards for the coming year are the Knight of Wands and the 8 of Pentacles.
The Knight of Wands comes from a Tarot.com reading which included these wonderful words: The Knight of Wands in this position advises that you modify your self-image in order to get a sense of yourself as a person of action. No matter what your past patterns have been, it is fully possible to place yourself solidly on your road toward the future. As someone who has spent far too much of life waiting for the tides of whatever to sweep me into whatever place I was supposed to go, this is a radically reassuring and affirming message.
The 8 of Pentacles. . . well, that's the card of Doing the Work: spending the time to make sure the basic skills are so thoroughly a part of one's practice that the foundation is sturdy and reliable.
The cards are from my favorite Robin Wood deck. Knight of Wands is center top.
The King of Wands keeps coming up in the same position for me, that of the "higher power" which can indicate one's own higher consciousness or a guardian figure. The King of Wands was one of LM's signature cards. It's also significant in light of my work integrating the masculine energy of cards which have been important to the influential men in my life, particularly the Kings of Wands and Swords and the Emperor.
The 9 of Pentacles resonates with me more deeply than the Queen of Pentacles, and speaks to my ongoing work around good physical self-care, being a good steward of my resources, and uniting my spiritual path with my daily life.
And of course I continue my ongoing journey to appreciate and honor my internal Queen of Cups, whose existence I strenuously denied for most of my life.
The Queen of Swords remains my primary tarot identification, and I'm working on remembering and revitalizing my Queen of Wands aspect as well. She's been shrouded during the years of grieving and it's time I drew on her fire again.
